Couple's idea of retirement is a labor of love

Oct. 30, 2013

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STORY BY DONNA BAXTER

PHOTOS BY DAVID WELKER

Mark and Dixie Dawson credit the fruit of their labors in the past for the privilege of following their dream in retirement. Their website is http://www.blackberrycreekretreat.com.

Want to go?

Blackberry Creek’s annual Country Christmas Open House and Craft Bazaar is

9 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 7 and 1-4 p.m. Dec. 8. The entrance is marked by a small sign on Webster County Route KK five miles west of Route B between Marshfield and Rogersville. For vendor and other information, call Dixie Dawson at 859-7466. Suggest a home

If a friend’s home (or yours!) is worth profiling, send names, address, phone number and brief description to shocklander@news-leader.com. Homes for sale are not eligible.

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Mark and Dixie Dawson are living their dream — Blackberry Creek Retreat Bed and Breakfast — described by Mark as the fruit of their labors from years before that allowed them to do what they’re doing now.

“This is retirement, and we’re working harder than we ever worked in our life,” he said. “Don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but we enjoy the people who come through our doors.”

He added that guests come as strangers and leave as family.

“Everything we’ve done has been based on people, but this business is different from anything else we’ve done,” he said.

Blackberry Creek’s annual Country Christmas Open House and Craft Bazaar is scheduled Dec. 7 and 8.

Comfy rockers on a wide front porch welcome guests, and just inside is a library and sitting room. To the left are four guest bedrooms, each with a private bath.

The walkout lower level has a 2,400-square-feet meeting room along with an outside deck for events, retreats and weddings. Spacious grounds, a fire pit and wooded surroundings add to its beauty and peacefulness.

“It’s kind of quiet until we get a DJ or a band out here for a wedding or other event,” Mark said with a laugh. “Our neighbors have been very patient and understanding, though. One said their cows actually give more milk when we have a DJ over here.”

Dixie said the kitchen is built and decorated like a large home kitchen, but the health department required the installation of a separate hand-washing sink.

Blackberry Creek opened six and a half years ago — a work of love, a representation of their 40-year marriage, the Dawsons say.

Mark said, a bed and breakfast was “kind of Dixie’s dream. She and a cousin visited another local B & B some years ago. We’ve always been involved in hospitality with a house full of people and entertaining. Seems like those two ideas melted together, and we pursued that dream when I retired from sales.”

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Dixie said they purchased the property about 15 years ago while still living and working in Texas.

“We called it our summer or vacation home. Later when we were retired and the kids were gone, we were still young. We tell people we must have fallen on our head or something,” she said with a laugh.

The Dawsons built nearly every bit of the bed and breakfast themselves, she continued, except the fireplace and technical things like electric, mechanical and plumbing.

“An Amish guy made the mantel out of two logs that came from a cabin on my family’s farm near Fordland,” Dixie said.

A fifth-generation resident of Webster County her family — the Ewings — settled there in the 1830s. That would make the grandchildren seventh generation, she said.

Mark grew up in Springfield, Dixie near Rogersville. They met at Zenith, where both worked. Shortly after their marriage he was transferred to south Texas, where he worked in Mexico and she on the Texas side.

Three years later he took a job in Dallas selling electronic equipment for building circuit boards. They lived there for 25 years. Dixie stayed at home while sons Matthew and Peter were growing up. They now have four grandchildren.